Thursday, August 27, 2009

This is just a quick update to say that i've been putting the final touches on my plans, and getting everything in motion. I have been busy - and will remain busy - until the moment I fly out. Once I begin this grand trip, I actually imagine things will become more restful - and less frantic. We will see.

September 3rd at 9:00pm I will be flying to Iceland - and that's when the trip will, at last, be underway.

Tokyo, Japan, is well known for its cultural life, both ancient and modern. Few cities have the same amalgam of urban youth, mixed with long running spiritual beliefs. It is perhaps because of this, or in spite of this, that the graffiti in Tokyo has taken on such a distinctive style.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Kensington Market is one of Toronto's most diverse neighbourhoods, and is a National Historic Site. For further information on Kensington Market, please read the wikipedia article which lists history, location, and other useful information.

Aside from the variety of shops, and small grocers, there is also a number of graffiti pieces to be found amongst the sidestreets, mainstreets, and alleys. Here are but a few of them.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Kensington Market is one of Toronto's most diverse neighbourhoods, and is a National Historic Site. For further information on Kensington Market, please read the wikipedia article which lists history, location, and other useful information.

Aside from the variety of shops, and small grocers, there is also a number of graffiti pieces to be found amongst the sidestreets, mainstreets, and alleys. Here are but a few of them.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

So, you've gone on a great journey, and now you're back. You take a look, discouragingly, at your stack of memory cards, overburdened with high resolution images. Sure, you shot them at such a 10mp, leaving them with the fidelity to stand up to 11x20in prints, but then you look around at your walls.

Where would you possibly hang an 11x20in print? And what image do you consider so fantastic that you're willing to have every single eye in your home drawn to it - and only it - for the rest of forever? Maybe you'll swap them every now and then, having a host of giant images of turtles, or volcanoes, or - I don't know - little indigenous children going about their daily lives, wondering why some person with a camera bigger than their heads keeps staring at them.

So what options do you have? Throwing four 4x6in prints per page into a binder reminiscent of your parents collections? Binders that will then occupy way too much space, and do little more than collect dust? Sure - I guess that's an option, but not one that I would recommend. As we jump into the new era of internet trickery we are met with the option of Photo Books!

What is a Photo Book?A photo book is just that - a book of your photos. There are a number of websites that will let you create these wondrous treasures, each with their own pros, cons, benefits, and limitations. The big names, as far as I know, are as follows:

Blacks Memorables: This is a very limited photo book creator, and yet it's the one I use most often. Sure it's limited, but it comes with a number of great layouts, allowing you to create your photo book in a fraction of the time. It also has an automated method, where you simply drag and drop all your photos, and the page will do all the rest for you.

Blurb: Blurb is by far the most customizable photo book software I've come across, and you can also add your photo book to their market place, allowing you to sell it on a print-per-customer basis. This might be a nice little way to try and make a few extra bucks. But even without this, Blurb is highly recommended.

Photo Book Reviews 2009: Well, there were not as many companies to mention as I thought - why mention ones other than the best, and the one I use most often? Sure there are more options - but you can just google them, or read this review of the top sites. Don't trust their viovio review though - I think it's there because the get paid for referring people to the site.

Why Do I Want a Photo Book?I will tell you why - because no one wants to flip through your six hundred pictures. Nobody. Not one single person in this A.D.H.D. environment cares about the tour guide, whose name you don't even remember anymore. They don't care about the place settings you laid out for breakfast. And they definitely don't care about that woman and her little dog you spotted across the road from a cafe.

But with a photobook, you can add a number of images per page - this allows for the viewer to become engaged with the book, and overcome by the experience. It makes viewing photo albums fun (I know - I can hardly believe it.) And not only does it make the experience for your hapless victim more enjoyable, you'll find yourself more willing to look through your old pictures. These books print thin, and beautiful. They are a delight to flip through. They will create a post-travel experience like none other, and even the act of choosing which pictures to place where can be of great fun.

And - as I said - you can place seven or eight pictures, in a variety of sizes, per page. This also allows you to grant one 8.5x11in page to a single image, which singles just how important that one image is.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

For those that follow my writing, and my ranting, you may recall a recent post about an LT3100 Gateway Netbook. I had purchased this fine piece of hardware from a local Best Buy store, which just happens to be the Markham, Ontario location. Now you may recall the terrible service I received, and the running around it required to simply buy a computer. Then, the post went on, to explain how the hardware was defective, and the wireless card kept dropping signal while unplugged. I assumed this was a Vista problem, as few netbooks have been tried and tested under that Operating System. What I may have failed to mention in that earlier post is that the safety seal, which proves to the consumer that the unit they are purchasing was untampered with, was already peeled back. It had been opened, unboxed, and used - repackaged, with the seal pressed down to closely match its original position. I had been sold, as new, a netbook that had been returned once already.

Fast Forward to YesterdayAs the netbook was of no use to me, but I still needed to backup my photographs on the road, I looked into other options. A sleek and simple external harddrive might just be the trick. My choice? A Simpletech Espresso 500gb external drive. This hard drive is sleek, smooth, and - in keeping with the alliteration - sexy. Five hundred gigabytes of storage, the size of a deck of cards. And best of all? No external power supply was required - you just plugged in the one, or two, USB cords, and your laptop powered the drive, allowing you quick and easy support. Plug and Play, it works with just about any system.

Now, as this was purchased from Best Buy, it was kept safe and secure from tampering in one of their great giant cubes. You know, the big plastic packages, that hang awkwardly from the hooks, insuring you can not truly look at the product, aside from a brief glimpse of the box contained within? Come on, you know the ones - they sit there in piles, looking for all the world, like a miniature version of New York Cities Apple Store?

At least, I thought, I didn't have to wait for service. No, this time I could just pick it up and walk on out. Which is exactly what I did - except when I got to the cash, and they used their mystical device, coupled with two or three words of power, to unlock the cosmic cube, and release its hardware-filled innards, I noticed something odd. As my credit card was run, and I grabbed my receipt it was confirmed:

The Bane of Best BuySure the tactical cube had kept is safe from tampering, and the preying hands of sixteen year olds cruising the mall for babes, stopping off to shake dvd cases until the come unhinged and get scratched up, on route to steal small cables and other unsecured things not belonging to them, but what the omnicube didn't protect against - what it wouldn't even have perceived as a threat, were the tainted hands of Best Buy employees trying to save a dollar or two, or just avoid return shipping paperwork.

A Crime in Any Other Words...My hard drive's safety seal was cracked, once again! And while the employee had tried to re-stick the plastic circle, its time waiting for a new owner in the terrible and deadly cube had been too much. It had started to peel, and the dust, and small big of hair underneath, had prevented the much-desired true seal.

This product had been previously returned and simply returned to the shelf, at full price. But it was too late - I'd made my purchase, and the line at the returns section was far too long to wait in.

Let me pause here for a moment - Best Buy has a returns section. You don't simply walk up to the cash like you would at most stores, they have a section for returns only. There is always a long line at this section. These should have been clues - but they were not.

Taking the Simpletech Espresso 500gb HomeAs I unpackaged it, and sat it, pristine in shape and design, beside my laptop I was in awe of its natural splendor. As I plugged it in, and had it running within moments, I was amazed by how smooth the process was. Plugging my SD card into the laptop as well, I could simply drag and drop files over - files that copied at a speed of about 90 seconds per gig (this is quite speedy.)

It worked wonderfully, I tested opening the files to make sure it was a true copy, and everything worked well. Step two? Connecting it to another computer, and offloading the data.

I shut down my laptop, connected to my desktop, and up popped the files, and folders. Click click, set to copy and "Files are Corrupted. Can Not Copy."

Wait? What!?

The file names were there, and the icons - I tried to open one: No Preview Available.

Maybe it's just the computer? I connected it to another - "Drive is not formatted. Would you like to format now?" Sure - I guess. O.K. So I lost 8gigs of photos, but they were still on the memory card: this isn't my first rodeo. I understand that xHDs crash, I wanted to be sure my data was safe before deletion.

"Drive can not be formatted."

Huh? Really? O.K. Lets try to plug it back into my laptop that started this whole party. I plugged the USB cable in and -

and -

and -

Nothing. It was no longer even recognized as a drive. It was a doorstop, pure and simple, a doorstop once destined for so much more, but due to a youth full of drug use and alcoholism, it had fallen from grace losing so much potential along the way, barely even to make a spinning whirr though the, once telltale, red light still shone.

I was prepared for the drive to crash at some point during the year (what does that say about the type of quality we demand from our markets, by the way?) but not this fast. Not in less than ten minutes - less than ten minutes.

Moving on to TodayBack to Best Buy I went, to return my product. I waited in the return line, behind five other people - the line kept refilling itself as I moved forward in place - and finally it was my turn. My turn to reclaim the cash which was mine.

"Umm - this product says it comes with installation software. There's a charge for things not returned."

I paused for a moment. Some might be willing to fall for her high school girl charm, and dimwittedness, but not I. I was prepared for this, "the software was on the drive."

"Oh," she finally uttered, turning the package around and around in her hands, perhaps admiring its combination of glossy cardboard fully integrated into its plastic exterior. All along, she was reading, and turning, and reading and turning, no doubt trying to find some other reason to not give me a full refund - perhaps the missing security seal on top would cost me a dollar or two?

After she had completed three and a half rotations of the object she nodded, I imagine her inward dialogue saying, "look at that fool in the ridiculous Tilley Hat, with his stupid beard - he must have missed something - but what? What?! I can't find a thing! Damn!"

Finally she succumbed to my infinite patience and ran my card for a full refund. As I was walking away I saw her tape the top of the box shut with clear tape marked "Inspected by Best Buy." The same type of tape used to seal all products on their reduced section.

Maybe they taped the box to secure it, while they sent it back to the distributor - or maybe it's, right now, being resold at a sharp discount (a trick used to be to buy a product, damage the box, and return it. The next day you'd find it 30% off on the clearance table.) If this is the case, the store has no shame - and deserves some serious finger waving. I informed the daft darling that the drive was completely crashed, and beyond recognizing data. There was no hope for it, no saving it. It was dead. As dead as something without life could ever be. She smiled, and shooed me on my way. There was after all a long line of people waiting to return things.

The Outcome?There are two outcomes I can see - one having a part a.) and a part b.) Are you excited for my revelations? Either the drive was sent back to the manufacturer for being seriously defective, or - and I like this one the best - the drive is being resold, just as it was to me, after being returned. Option a.) is that the drive will be of no use, and returned once more, or b.) after time waiting for a new owner, the drive will spring to life - in which case, someone will have two thousand of my holiday photographs. If you come across them, I hope you like my various photo essays of Scotland. And the ones of my with bottle caps? They're for keeps, for sure!

So Best Buy, fool me once, shame on you - fool me... you can't get fooled again.

And for those thinking I'm exaggerating? This isn't the first time Best Buy has sold a bricked piece of hardware.